He Keeps Books to Remember
by Slash4Femme
Summary: Giles marks his and Oz's relationship with books


_This is a fan-fiction series based on the _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ characters and universe. The main characters in this story are Oz, and Giles. Although erotica is not the purpose of this story their maybe some and at least some of it will be of a homosexual verity. This story certainly deals with at least one relationship between men._

He keeps books to remember 

When they met again, for the second time it was in a jazz club. They joked sometimes, that it should have been a library. They had first met in a library.

Giles still sometimes pictured Oz that way. Sitting at the big table in the high school library, legs not quite touching the floor, small body bent over a book. Long fingers with black painted nails careful turning pages, pale face intent. Oz read everything, from dictionaries, histories, science textbook, magazines and romance novels and each with equal seriousness and concentration, stopping to ponder every point before continuing. When Giles had entered the library making some small noise as he went Oz had looked up and Giles had been confronted by the darkest, most intense eyes he had ever seen on a boy so young or so pale. Later he would learn Oz was not that young, oldest of the children, a full year older then his grade, in Willow's words 'highest scoring student ever to repeat senior year'. Later Giles would learn about Oz's father who had left, and his mother who drank, about Oz's habit of going for days without eating, his fierce loyalty to friends, his effortless navigation of social situations. He would learn of Oz's love of small children, hair dye, jewelry, eyeliner, curries, and fresh fruit, nights when it rained, and sleeping where he could see the stars. Later Giles would learn about the wolf, and about Oz's music that ran through Oz like blood, but in that first moment Giles learned the most important thing about Oz and the one he never told him. Oz would fine Giles soul.

Sometimes Giles marked their life together with music, sometimes with books. He had been reading Proust when he met Oz that first day. Going into his office trying to get work done while stopping every couple of minutes to watch the boy through the glass. Oz had sat and read for hours, when he finished the book he had stood and carefully replaced it on the shelf before leaving the library. He had never once looked Giles' way, but later that night, alone in his apartment, Giles had sat struggling to keep his mind on his book, thinking of dark bottomless eyes.

He had been most of the way through T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the first time he had ever kissed Oz. It had been cool out, almost what passed for winter there, with a sharpness to the nights, and a certain slow softness to the days. Oz had been researching, Giles lecturing on why Oz shouldn't walk home at night, or anywhere for that matter after dark in Sunnydale. It should have been odd and not right to have Oz there so late at Giles' apartment, but this was Oz, to whom no rules applied and who seemed to slip in and out of space and groups like a ghost silent and unlooked for. It had seemed only natural for Oz to be there, sitting on his couch reading and gently humming to himself. Natural in a way, it would have never been with Buffy or Willow, or Xander, but then Oz had never been like the others. So when Oz finished his song, looked up at Giles and smiles, it seemed only right and natural for Giles to take Oz's face in his hands and kiss him. Oz had tasted of rain, mint, and warmth. His small body had felt right and good against Giles, and when Giles had released him, pulling back a question in his eyes, Oz had smiled,

"It's good you did that when you did," his voice had been light tinged with sunlight, and shade

"I was beginning to think I was going to have to spell it out for you, or jump you or something"

His eyes where laughing when he had pulled Giles close for another kiss.

Giles had been reading, Faulkner's The Sound the Furry the day Oz left. Standing in his living room, trying, trying so hard not to shout, not to allow Oz to see how mad he was, how numb. He kept telling himself he had been stupid, he had been a fool, not to know this would happen, to think it would all work out. Oz had stood silently by the door. Giles, arms cross and rigid by the couch, couldn't even bring himself too look at him. Seeing Oz, seeing Oz's eyes and tight, pain pinched, face would have made Giles break down, loose everything, and he had already lost too much.

"Oz" he voice had sounded too hard, too brittle, too close to snapping in his own ears.

"What do you want me to tell you?" Oz's voice had been too even, too controlled. Giles had flinched away from it as if he had been slapped. "I can't do it any more Giles. I can't control it, me, him, the wolf. You saw her, you know what I did. What I can do"

Something had snapped in Oz's voice, for a second Giles had heard the fear and the anguish, the shame and the hurt, smelled the woods and the darkness, the blood and the need. He had known what Oz was going to have to do, what he would have to pay for this freedom, banishment, this end. Giles had wanted to go to him then, take the younger man in his arms, make it alright, make it different some how, but he had stood frozen and stiff by the couch. Oz had turned to leave, fishing in a pocket with one hand for his keys.

"Do you love me?"

It had been the wrong thing to say, Giles knew, the wrong time, and the wrong place. Childish of him, selfish to bring up now what they had never talked about, never mentions. He had hated himself almost instantly wishing the words back, even as he knew he would never take them back, and disown all they implied, never.

Oz had stopped half way through the door, his hand on the knob and turned for one moment to look at Giles.

"You know I do"

His voice had been low, so low Giles had almost not heard him, then he had been through the door, and gone without waiting to here Giles reply. Giles had stood and stared at the door for a long time after Oz's van had pulled away.

The next time Oz left, Giles had taken it quietly, calmly even, but he had not read anything for a month afterwards, and every time had listened to music he had tasted tears.

The club was dimly lit and filled with smoke. People talked quietly at the bar or at separate tables while a jazz band played on the stage at the end of the room. It had taken Giles months of being in Cleveland to find someplace he could go to relax. He kept telling himself and Buffy he was too old for this kind of life anymore and he needed his downtime. For a moment he paused at the door scanning the room, watching the people in it. At a table closest to the stage a young man sat, red haired, and slim, feet not quite touching the floor, dressed in old jeans, too small t-shirt, black trench coat and leather collar. An almost untouched drink sat before him, but he ignored it, bent over a book carefully reading it, weighing each point before moving on to the next page. Giles began to move, slowly as if in a dream, doing what he should have done the first time, in another place all those years ago. As he approached the table dark eyes looked up to meet his, intense and deep, Oz's smiled and held out his hand.


End file.
